Either that, or maybe the highway sign marking the location of the tiny Texas community was just too easy a target for taggers to resist.

The photo above was sent to us by Carolyn Michnoff of Dallas, who said she often passes through Romney — off Interstate 20 between Abilene and Weatherford — on her way to property that her family owns in Junction, Texas.

“It’s kind of rude, I thought,” she said of the vandalism.

Not that a lot of votes are at stake in Romney – or that many people will to see the spray-painters’ handiwork.

The unincorporated “town” is a few houses, and not much more, along U.S. 183, a two-lane highway, in Eastland County. There’s no post office, no chamber of commerce, no city hall. Its neighbors include Cisco, Clyde, and Ranger. “If you blink, you’d miss it,” Michnoff said.

A dispatcher at the Eastland County sheriff’s office in Eastland said she knew nothing about the highway sign. Neither the sheriff nor his deputies were available, she said, because of the Columbus Day holiday.

“They’re not at work today,” the dispatcher explained.

But reached by phone, two folks who live near Romney confirmed that the sign has been defaced. One works in a CPA’s office in nearby Cisco, and she says said she noticed this morning on her way into the office that the sign had been vandalized. “But I didn’t see what it said.”

Then there’s Sandra Koonce, who lives on the outskirts of Rising Star.

“My daughter told me about it,” she says. “We were driving to soccer practice — she’s 10 — and she said, ‘Mama, they crossed out Romney, and somebody spray-painted Obama.’ She’s only 10, and she sat there for a minute and thought about it. Then she said, ‘Oh, I get it.’ I said, ‘That’s not very nice.’”

Not since Rick Perry was showing off his debating skills has anything from our state entertained the national news media more. A Google search for “Texas 85 mph” immediately spits back stories from USA Today, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, National Public Radio, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among others.

The unsubtle undertone of much of this coverage can be summed up as: ”Do you believe what those crazy Texans are doing now?”

So I was glad to see this story from The Texas Tribune, which notes that not everyone in the state is champing at the bit to hop on the new road, State Highway 130, and drive like a bat out of hell. (Or like Slim Pickens’ character, Maj. T.J. “King” Kong, in Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy from 1964.)

The Tribunbe story quotes John Esparza, president of the Texas Motor Transportation Association, as saying that many truckers will steer clear of the toll road, which roughly parallels the more congested Interstate 35..

One consideration is safety, Esparza says. (State transportation officials say the highway is designed to be safe at 85.)

But another is economics: Trucking companies encourage drivers to keep it under 65, no matter what the speed limit is, because higher speeds reduce mileage. That, in turn, raises fuel costs.

The story quotes another industry official, Sean McNally, as saying that a truck going 75 uses 27 percent more fuel than one going 65.

Dianne Jacob, who writes not about food so much as about food writing, interviewed Fain about her daily writing routine, the differences between writing a blog and writing a cookbook, and how a blogger might hope to make money.

I don’t own a TV. If you want to be serious as a writer, it’s important to read every day, good magazines like The New Yorker. It’s important to write every day at the same time. You sit in front of the computer and your body just knows you have to write. Hard work and persistence always trump talent. … You can’t give up.

David Prince, the owner of Eagle Gun Range, says the parties will be safe, and educational.

“The age limit is 8 years old,” he says. “You have to be tall enough to get above the shooting table. They’re not gonna be left unattended. Parents are gonna be one-on-one, or if there’s not enough parents, we’ll have range safety officers here to show them how to do it safely.”

He says letting youngsters shoot real firearms at birthday parties will “take the mystery out of guns,” adding, “we’re gonna do a lot of education here at this range.”

Since the story of Eagle Gun Range aired, it’s been making the rounds nationally, as one of those “quintessentially Texan” tales. (No matter how polite people on the East Coast pretend to be about it, when they describe something as “quintessentially Texan,” what they usually mean is, “Good Lord, you won’t believe what those imbeciles down in Texas are up to now!”)

After repeating owner Prince’s rule about participants being at least 8 and tall enough to use the shooting table, Kimmel says: “Other than that, the only rule is no shooting in the bouncy house.”

He adds: “This is a dangerous idea, but I think it’s more dangerous for parents than it is for kids. Because I don’t think I’ve ever been to a kids’ birthday party at which I haven’t wanted to shoot myself. They shouldn’t make it so easy.”

She was informed that she won’t be teaching there in the fall, after — but not, the university insists, because — she complained about what she thought was an inappropriate display of Christianity at the public university.

Last fall, Bradford, who is Jewish, protested to university officials over the installation of crosses on a prominent tower — the Torre de Esperanza, or Tower of Hope — near the university’s entrance.

“I hope the crosses will be reconsidered and removed, that the message of our most prominent structure is one of hope universally; Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu,” she wrote to an administrator.

The crosses were taken down after the American Civil Liberties Union and others took up the cause.

Afterward, Bradford started getting threatening emails. One intimated that she might wind up in a coffin. “After that you will reign with your father Satan,” it said.

Houston artists Dan Havel and Dean Ruck created "Inversion" out of two old houses.

OK, that headline is unfair, because I’m not talking about all buildings.

I’m talking only about two examples, one from Dallas and one from Houston, that I stumbled onto while roaming through the Interweb this morning. Each was a story about how decaying structures were dealt with in their respective cities.

The buildings were two adjoining old houses on Houston’s colorful Montrose Boulevard. They were owned by Art League Houston, which had used them for more than 30 years for art classes and exhibitions. But by 2005, their time had passed, and the small, wood-frame houses were scheduled for demolition to make way for a new building.

Before the houses were torn down, though, the art league commissioned two sculptors, Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, to transform them into a piece of public art.

The result, which you see in the photo above, was “Inversion.” The artists peeled boards from the outside of the houses and reattached them, creating the illusion of a vortex — as if the exterior of the front house were being sucked into a small tunnel that ran through both houses.

Then, out back, they attached boards to make them look like they were being spit out of the vortex.

From the start, Havel and Ruck knew that their primary audience would be driving by on Montrose Boulevard at 30+ miles per hour and hoped to attract their attention. Instantly, brakes began to squeal and traffic began to clog as drivers stopped to take in this extraordinary vision that seemed to have appeared overnight.

For the next six months, crowds continued to flock to the site, many returning several times to crawl through the funnel, take pictures and share the experience with family and friends. Unprecedented media coverage spread the image to world-wide audiences through local, regional and international publications, television news coverage, and images posted on several blog sites.

In October 2005, “Inversion” was demolished so the new construction could proceed. (Emphasis added.)

So artists and art patrons and their neighbors in Montrose not only found a way to make something entertaining, creative, extraordinary out of two beat-up old houses — they did so knowing that it would be torn down a few months later.

Quoting again from the web page cited above:

Havel and Ruck saw the ephemeral quality of the work as one of its most important qualities. Because of its imminent disappearance the viewer was forced to relegate “Inversion” to memory, where these two discarded, broken down bungalows would never be forgotten.

The city has been trying for years to figure out what to do with these properties.

And during that time, Robert writes, the old buildings have been “left to rot. … And so they’ve become shadows of shadows of their former selves, canvases for taggers and targets for vandals.”

Here’s a picture of one of them today, the Walnut Hill branch library, which opened in the early 1960s near Marsh Lane and Northwest Highway:

I’m sure there are a dozen ways in which my examples from Dallas and Houston aren’t comparable — different objectives for landholders in the public and private sectors, different land-use rules, different liability concerns, different neighborhoods, different real estate markets, … heck, even the buildings are different.

Still, having lived in both cities, I would argue that there may also be important differences in aesthetic and civic sensibilities.

Art League Houston, together with Havel and Ruck, looked at decay and saw art. Out of two crummy old houses, they built something worthwhile, something uplifting.

They took a tiny piece of their city that was dying, and they gave it life.

Way too often in Dallas, we seem content to sit back and watch as the opposite process unfolds.

The former TV critic for Salon writes in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine that the new series — it isn’t a “remake,” because it’s a “continuation” – is too slick, too insincere, too Hollywood, with its bland young stars who remind her of Abercrombie & Fitch models, or actors in “a swashbuckling high-capitalist adventure directed by Michael Bay,” or the cast of any prime-time soap: “just another gaggle of energetic, beautiful people with international ambitions and very little body hair, bedding and double-crossing one another…”

She misses the grit, the decadence, the toxic mendacity of the old CBS crew, “the regular-folks charms of Patrick Duffy, the creepy-uncle appeal of Larry Hagman or the homecoming-court runner-up magnetism of Charlene Tilton.”

She wonders why they even bothered to call it Dallas.

In fact, this extreme-makeover version of “Dallas” could take place anywhere on the globe; call the show “London” or “Mumbai” or “Beijing,” and you’ve got the same fit humans tapping away at their laptops and pumping their fists over the latest business deal.

So the new Dallas disappoints because its stars are pretty, if vacuous; and because it lacks the authenticity, the sense of place, of the old Dallas?

As someone who’s lived here nearly 30 years, I find that latter criticism to be impossibly curious.

CBS

Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing in the original Dallas,

Dallas the TV series portrayed Dallas the city about as honestly, and discerningly, as Pretty Woman did the L.A. hooker scene.

Indeed, I can barely think of a TV show that presented a more thoroughly phony view of a place.

There’s more to Havrilesky’s critique, but, to be honest, my eyes started to glaze over about halfway through. There are just so many words, piled fast upon one another like New Yorkers on the Lexington Avenue Express: “the airless prison of dysfunctional kinship … “the the patriotism and white-man’s-burden supremacy of Reagan’s America” … “a period-specific American grandiosity that felt synonymous with Texan pride … “this mythical vision of Texas as the heart of the country, the last frontier, a land of handsome cowboys galloping across the grassy ranchland…”

There’s probably a point in there somewhere, and it’s probably an insightful one.

But to know for sure, I’d have to care a lot more than I do about the Ewings — past and future.

On the matter of immigration, the center takes the empowering view that immigrants wield “significant economic, cultural, and electoral power,” especially in Sun Belt cities like Texas, and that that power will only grow over time.

This week, the center highlighted ways highlighting ways in which “immigrants and people of color” are changing the face of Texas.

The following are some of the more interesting findings. Most come from U.S. Census Bureau data, or from studies based on Census data. Wherever possible, I included a link to the source document.

You’ll note, for starters, that Fourton doesn’t reveal the ingredients in his rub, the blend of spices that helps give his brisket its tantalizing flavor and dark crust. He knows what’s in it. You don’t.

You’ll also note that he cooks his meats slowly (15 to 18 hours, I think he says) in a smoker that uses wood, and only wood. There’s no other way to produce true Texas barbecue.

Different pitmasters will disagree on what kind of wood is best — mesquite or pecan or hickory or oak or some combination. They’ll disagree on how old the wood should be, how big the pieces should be, how to stack them in the smoker, when to add more, how much the wood should be allowed to flame and how much it should just smolder (producing its aromatic smoke)… But there is no sincere disagreement about whether wood is the way to go. The gas-powered smokers found at many inferior barbecue joints are more convenient to use (because the temperature can be controlled with a turn of a dial), but they’re a poor substitute for wood-smoking.

And your backyard gas grill is an even poorer substitute, no matter how many handfuls of wet wood chips you toss in.

Finally, Fourton has done this a few thousand times. Even if you started out equally talented — and you didn’t — by now he’d be better at it than you.

So you can watch the video and try to apply his lessons at home.

Or, you can watch the video and get yourself down to Pecan Lodge for lunch. It’s in Shed 2 of the Dallas Farmers Market. It’s open Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Justin and Diane also do catering.)